Seeking to improve understanding, communication, and cooperation between Mexico and the United States by promoting original research, encouraging public discussion, and proposing policy options for enhancing the bilateral relationship.

In Mexico, the law is an empty promise

A few weeks ago, the front page of Mexico’s pro-government tabloid La Razon carried a picture of President Enrique Peña Nieto and his wife watching school children play with Lego, on the last day of their state visit to Denmark. Smaller headlines pointed inside to another big story: a new video showing two Mexican soldiers and a federal police officer torturing a young woman suspect by suffocating her with a plastic bag, pulling her hair, and placing a gun to her head.

Such is the contradiction of Mexico today.

But then there is the Mexico of the plastic bag. The electric shock. The gun. A country where government forces, as well as the drug cartels, have committed atrocities that, according to an extensive legal analysis by my colleagues at the Open Society Justice Initiative, may amount to crimes against humanity.